Vlastně jsem ani nebyl překvapený. Na tomhle italském hřbitově se vždy děly velmi podivné věci. Z márnice se často ozýval nářek nemrtvých a kolem půlnoci jste mohli potkat mezi náhrobky duše zemřelých. Tohle je ale přeci jen trošku jiné. Z dávno zapomenutého hrobu leze ven děsivé stvoření. Nejdříve kostnatá ruka, potom tělo s odpadávajícím masem. Nechává za sebou hnisavou stopu. Stejně jako první dlouhohrající album italských maniaků KAIVS.
Pozorný čtenář našich stránek moc dobře ví, že jsme se téhle smečce již jednou věnovali. Recenze je spolu s rozhovorem odkazována dole pod dnešním článkem. Nové album je plné hnisu a špíny, je po okraj narvané svíjejícími červy, kteří jednou sežerou i vaše těla. A také ryzího, opravdového death metalu, zahraného odhodlaně a s touhou zabíjet.
Nové album působí jako vichr, který se někdy objevuje v katakombách. Je příznakem toho, že se v záhrobí něco děje. Skladby jsou napsány velmi návykově, s takovou tou temnou jiskrou a heavy efektem. Pánové se volně inspirovali u kapel jako NIHILIST, ENTOMBED, DISMEMBER, AUTOPSY, NECROPHOBIC, MORBID ANGEL, UNLEASHED, SLAYER, GRAVE. Zvuk je velmi dobře ošetřen, celá nahrávka působí velmi morbidně, nebál bych se napsat až děsivě. Skvělý je, ostatně jako vždycky, i obal od mistra Juanjo Castellana. Zkrátka a dobře, pokud posloucháte ryzí a opravdový death metal ze staré školy, s příchutí zkaženého masa, hraje se zde i pro vás. Pokud ne, tak utíkejte pryč. Osobně se mi nejvíc asi líbí taková ta nakumulovaná energie, tlak a síla, které jsou z nahrávky cítit. Chtěl bych vidět kapelu někdy naživo, musí to být poctivý masakr. KAIVS sice vydávají první dlouhohrající album, ale působí jako zkušení muzikanti, kteří přesně vědí, co a jak chtějí hrát. Deska na mě působí velmi naléhavě, ihned, během několika prvních poslechů, se mi zadřela hluboko do mozku. Rád se k ní vracím. Nejlépe v noci, když je kolem zdánlivé tich a klid. Nenechte se ale mýlit, nemrtví nikdy nespí a pokud budete pozorní, určitě je během společných setkání s "After the Flesh" spatříte. Vlastně jsem ani nebyl překvapený. Na tomhle italském hřbitově se vždy děly velmi podivné věci. Z márnice se často ozýval nářek nemrtvých a kolem půlnoci jste mohli potkat mezi náhrobky duše zemřelých. Hnilobou nasáklý, mrazivý a temný death metal ze staré školy, který vám vyrve všechny vnitřnosti z těla!
Asphyx says:
Actually, I wasn't even surprised. Very strange things always happened in this Italian cemetery. There was often the wailing of the undead from the morgue, and around midnight you could see the souls of the dead among the tombstones. But this is a little different. A terrifying creature crawls out of a long-forgotten grave. First a bony hand, then a body with flesh falling off. Leaving a festering trail behind. Just like the first full-length album from Italian maniacs KAIVS.
The attentive reader of our website knows very well that we have already covered this pack once. The review, along with the interview, is linked below today's article. The new album is full of pus and filth, it is packed to the brim with writhing worms that will one day eat your bodies. And it's also pure, true death metal, played with determination and a desire to kill.
The new album is like a whirlwind that sometimes appears in the catacombs. It's a sign that something is happening in the beyond. The songs are written in a very addictive way, with that dark sparkle and heavy effect. The gentlemen were loosely inspired by bands like NIHILIST, ENTOMBED, DISMEMBER, AUTOPSY, NECROPHOBIC, MORBID ANGEL, UNLEASHED, SLAYER, GRAVE. The sound is very well treated, the whole record has a very morbid, I wouldn't be afraid to write scary. The cover artwork by the master Juanjo Castellano is great, as always. In short, if you listen to pure and true death metal from the old school, with a flavour of rotten meat, this is played here for you too. If not, run away. Personally, I think what I like the most is the kind of accumulated energy, pressure and power that you can feel from the record. I'd love to see the band live sometime, it must be an honest to goodness massacre. KAIVS may be releasing their first full-length album, but they come across as experienced musicians who know exactly what they want to play and how they want to play it. The album has a very urgent effect on me, immediately, within the first few listens, it dug deep into my brain. I love coming back to it. Preferably at night, when it's seemingly quiet and peaceful around me. Make no mistake though, the undead never sleep and if you are attentive, you will definitely see them during your time together with "After the Flesh". Actually, I wasn't even surprised. Very strange things have always happened in this Italian cemetery. Often the cries of the undead would come from the morgue, and around midnight you would see the souls of the dead among the tombstones. Rotten, frosty and dark death metal from the old school that will rip your guts out!
Can you introduce your band to our readers? When was it founded and what style of music do you play?
Leonardo "Scouting up musicians from around the city we're based in. Started crushing rehearsals and compositions at the speed of light, so that we were already packed up for our very first tour throughout our nation surroundings within six months, more or less. What you can expect from our music is some pure Death Metal straight from beneath our corrupted hearts".
Max "I created Kaivs in the summer of 2022, an outfit death metal based on buzzsaw guitarsound riffs, in the tradition of mighty Stockholm's bands of the 90's scene. I'm the singer, and I have with me Tiziano on the guitar, Jacopo on the bass, and Leonardo on the drums".
Jacopo: "Kaivs was born during the early summer of 2022 by the idea of our megalithic singer, Max. He was scouting all around Rome to find the right members to build this project with, sooner than we thought we had the whole line-up ready to storm rehearsals. The main concept of the band was to take a great inspiration from the giant colossus of the Swedish death metal like Dismember and Entombed, and give it a personal flair with some blackened patterns and riffs. We brought our main influences into the project and developed the sound that incarnates the most essence of our music and you can already hear it from the demo we have available online, and soon you’ll get much and much more. The starting idea was to have five musicians in our formation, but we soon found out that the 4-way formation provides the best results with the right combination of ruthlessness and rawness".
Max "Am I megalithic? Oh, no!".
Where and under what conditions were you recording the new album? Who was in charge of sound, production and mastering?
Max "We only have only a demo out or a sort of Ep if you like, and it's called "Horrend". For the full-length instead, we've all the songs ready, and we'll enter the studio in May, to finally realease it before the end of this year... hopefully!".
Jacopo "We are going to conduct the recordings at Kika Studios in Rome (IT), basically it became our second home in a matter of weeks during the last year and it’s set to be out for a label that will be revealed soon enough. The album will be entitled “After the Flesh” and the full production will be ensured by our trustworthy herald “Andrea Kikazaru”: he already worked on our Demo and the results were out of our comprehension, so we commonly decided that the whole production will be granted by him once again. “After the Flesh” will also include an amazing piece of art, drawn by the black magic-infused hands of Juanjo Castellano, and it’s set to be out in between this summer and this autumn".
Max "We'll record as for "Horrend", absolutely live also this time too!".
Leonardo "We're gonna record our first album at “Kika Studios” in Rome (IT), which basically became our rehearsal and rec home since the day. “Kika” is the name of our sound engineer too and we proudly entrust our works to him. Our first record is going to be recorded in live sessions featuring bass, drums and guitar, while the vocals will be taken in a separated moment to ensure no acoustic feedback's gonna ruin the tracks".
How many copies were released and which medium was used for this new edition (CD, digital, vinyl, cassette)?
Max "Just fifty copies in a cartoonsleeve format, we expect to have a reprint or a sort of re-issue within our fist album!".
Jacopo "We do not know exactly how many copies of “After the Flesh” will be released, but I can say that you will find it as a physical CD and on all streaming platforms. Currently, our demo “Horrend” is released in a pretty limited amount of copies: we are talking about nearly 50 copies in cardboard format and probably never printed back, so you better hurry if you would like to grab one yourself! The Demo tracks will be released online in a while".
Max "I said maybe it will be reprinted ahhhahh! (Laughters)".
Leonardo "We don't actually know how many copies are gonna be released, but we must say everything's gonna definitely be online on every streaming platform, as on CD only for the physical edition".
Who is the author of the lyrics and how were they created and about what do the lyrics deal with?
Leonardo "All of our lyrics are written by our frontman Max".
Max "I wrote all the lyrics of our songs, and they're about horror, antichristianity, death and destruction".
Jacopo "All the vocal lines and lyrics are magistrally written by our singer Max".
Max "Well... thank you, man!".
Who created the logo of the band, and who took care of the graphics and the website?
Leonardo "Talking about website and social network, promotion I personally agree that it's the main source of distribution in the present days and everything's being took care by Max as well. For what concernes graphics (and band's image such as photos) Francesco Tacconi comes in handy, with his outstanding talent. The band logo was designed by the equally talented Harris Zullian.".
Max "Oh, Harriz Julian a guy form Indonesia draw the logo, I just saw some of his posts on Instagram and well... I just added him as a friend and wrote immediately to order it! It was just a sort of love at first sight with a font lettering he used, and I beg him to use it for us too and it worked out with an incredible final piece of art! He developed a very incredible logo".
Jacopo "The band logo was designed by Harris Zullian, a very talented artist who took the commission from Max and handed him several ideas in which one of these is our actual logo, nonetheless to say that he did a superb job in making it".
What about you and social networks? Do you consider these things important?
Jacopo "At the moment we do not have a website, but we use our facebook, instagram and our bandcamp page. Even though social networks are getting worse and worse in some aspects, we actively use them to promote our project with some snippets of music, news on the upcoming releases and to keep the people updated about our live shows. We consider social networks important as long as they concern our work including advertisements, band news and things like that".
Max "Oh yes, absolutely! You must be a nerd of that when you have a band! If you have any kind of stuff, you have to post it continually! Fans expect some pics and videos anywhere, even when you're shittin' on the loo!".
Which label did you choose for releasing your album and why this label? Are you satisfied by how your label represents you and takes care about you?
Max "We sent our demo to some dedicated labels in death metal and extreme in general. We had some good responses, some of them chose us and we're studying the best offer for the band and for the future of Kaivs before signing for anyone!".
Jacopo "We cannot talk about the label we have chosen, yet: in due time you’ll know the name. But I can say that we know the bands that cooperate with the label we choose, we received lots of positive feedbacks about the care and the passion and we can’t wait to fully cooperate with them".
Leonardo "We are proud to announce that we just signed a contract with a certain label and we'll keep this moment as our starting point for the future. A lot of gigs and tours are coming in the near future. About our first album we're gonna start the recording sessions in the month of May 2023, so keep an eye close".
Which bands do you idolise and where do you get your inspiration?
Max "All concerning Nihilist, Carnage, Carbonized, early Entombed until "Wolverine Blues" and Dismember until "Pieces". Also others like Autopsy, Necrophobic, Morbid Angel, Slayer, Grave and early Unleashed. Also all concerning about a certain punk attitude like Misfits, some dark with Type O Negative and Danzig, also early Iron Maiden, Motorhead, Sting, The Police, The Beatles and Billy Idol are just some of my faves!".
Jacopo "All four members of Kaivs come from very different contexts one from the other: some of us love thrash metal to folly, others go wild for doom metal...but on ONE thing we agree on: what kind of Death Metal we love. Our major inspirations come from the “Stockholm School” with bands such as Dismember and Entombed, but our sound has been heavily influenced by Autopsy and good dose of Slayer. All of this is slightly contaminated with little flairs of our main genre, which helped us to deliver our message clearly and more efficiently but never led astray from the main path".
Leonardo "We all agree our sound influences come from “Stockholm School” bands such as Dismember and Entombed, but each one of us has difference kinds of inspiration for what comes about music. My personal self, feels free to tell that a lot of my drumming is built up by Punk Rock music tho (*winks an eye)".
Did you send your record to some labels - which are these labels? How was the response?
Leonardo "As said someone's gonna be taking care of the distribution for the near future With that being said, I encourage you to stay tuned for some Raw, Classic, Krvshing death Metal. ARE YOU READY FOR SOME MOTHERF***ING KAIVS?!?!?!".
Max "As I said before, it was quite unexpected for the unthusiasm some labels/webzines gave us! We were not ready for such a start, and we couldn't forecast just anything like that! But the road is very long, you know, and we must remain death metal and very quite humble".
Jacopo "Before finding the best label for us we sent our promopack to lots and lots of labels scattered around the world, the product was well received and many positive feedbacks came through our e-mail: we asked for it, because we wanted to check if we were working in the right way, besides the band members are first listeners and then musicians. We didn’t expect to receive such a positive response from a lot of people, that fueled our engines and gave use more motivation to present the best product we could’ve came up with".
How many gigs have you played? Which type of gigs do you prefer, whether it's (clubs or festivals) and which of your performances would you consider as the best?
Max "We started with three gigs in Italy, one in Naples and they were really hardcore! I don't have any specific preference, I just wanna amuse myself and the audience and meet more metalheads as possible after and before!".
Jacopo "At the moment we played a handful of gigs here in Italy to promote our demo and to let people know that we exist and to spread our music. Generally we do not have a preference on a show over another, but I can say that if we have to give our personal opinion, we do prefer gigs where the organization is at its finest: providing a good show is the duty of the band and also it’s a responsability of the venue manager, the promoter, the sound engeneer... so basically it’s something that should be cared by several people. We do prefer this kind of shows (regardless of clubs or festivals)".
What about your plans for the future? What do you want to achieve with the band?
Max "We hope to have success one day and to live only earning from our music, why not? I'm very ambitious, but the world outside here is very competitive! We'll crank it out possibly!".
Jacopo "Our closest plan is to release “After the Flesh” during this year, then we will focus on the merchandise and begin scheduling the release tour, then it will be followed by another one and another one again: the main plan is delivering our music through brutal frequencies and hoping to do that for the years to come".
How and where can your fans contact you? Can you provide some contact information?
Jacopo "Of course, our fans can contact us on our Instagram page @kaivsband: we welcome every kind of feedback. For business inquiries the contact is via our e-mail kaivs@mail.com thank you for your time and patience, it was an honor".
V ulicích je zase mlha a smog. Lidé se bojí vycházet ven. Další mrtvé tělo, další zničený život. Atmosféra strachu padla na město jako těžký mrak. Zase je na lovu, čeká za rohem. Není úniku. Zlost v očích, záblesk nože a proříznuté hrdlo. Mrtvola padající k zemi. Ne, tohle není žádný horor. Tady se jedná o krutou, morbidní realitu, velmi podobnou té, kterou můžete zaslechnout i na novém EP italských KAIVS.
Tahle smečka hraje syrově a surově, s krvavou jiskrou v oku. Jedná se sice jen o tři skladby, o ochutnávku, ale již teď mohu napsat, že se nám v Itálii narodila další bestie. Jejich death metal je totiž velmi dobře zahraný, nepostrádá temné nálady, drive a sílu. Myslím, že by vám tahle nahrávka neměla uniknout.
Jedná se o starý, prašivý smrtící kov, známý z hlubokých katakomb. Ze skladeb je cítit pach rozkládajících se těl. Co se týká stylu, tak se pánové volně inspirovali na severu Evropy (GRAVE, DISMEMBER, NIHILIST, CARNAGE, ENTRAILS). Líbí se mi, že se nejedná jen o obyčejnou, dnes tolik typickou kopii věcí minulých. Skupina přidává svoje nápady, invenci. Hraje od srdce a je to hodně znát. Pochválit musím zvuk, který řeže a pálí, přesně tím způsobem, jako to mám rád. Zmínit musím samozřejmě i vynikající obal od mistra Juanjo Castellana (ostatně jako vždy). Klepeme na staré rakve a posloucháme šepot nemrtvých. Skladby se mi dostávají pomalu do krve a v žilách působí jako led. Dívám se do tmy a přidávám hlasitost. Chodím ulicemi bez světla a neustále se ohlížím za sebe. EP "Horrend" opravdu působí jako starý hororový film, který se změnil v krutou realitu. Polámané kosti, rozdupané lebky, beznaděj a chlad. Nekonečný chlad a temnotu, ty slyším z nahrávky nejvíce. Jen si říkám, že by to chtělo celé dlouhohrající album. Takhle se jedná jen o ochutnávku, kterou mě sice baví opravdu hodně poslouchat, ale chtěl bych víc! V ulicích je zase mlha a smog. Lidé se bojí vycházet ven. Další mrtvé tělo, další zničený život. Atmosféra strachu padla na město jako těžký mrak. Do ticha zazní první riff a vystřelí vám mozek z hlavy! Velmi povedená záležitost! Prašivý, zahnívající old school death metal ze starých pohřebišť!
Asphyx says:
The streets are foggy and smoggy again. People are afraid to go out. Another dead body, another life ruined. The atmosphere of fear has fallen on the city like a heavy cloud. He's on the prowl again, waiting around the corner. There's no escape. The rage in his eyes, the flash of the knife and the slit in his throat. A corpse falling to the ground. No, this isn't a horror movie. This is a harsh, morbid reality, very similar to the one you can hear on the new EP of Italian KAIVS.
This pack plays raw and brutal, with a bloody sparkle in their eye. This is only three tracks, a taster, but I can already write that another beast has been born in Italy. Their death metal is indeed very well played, not lacking in dark moods, drive and power. I think you shouldn't miss this record.
It is an old, mangy, deadly metal known from the deep catacombs. The tracks reek of decomposing bodies. As far as style is concerned, the gentlemen were loosely inspired by northern Europe (GRAVE, DISMEMBER, NIHILIST, CARNAGE, ENTRAILS). I like that this is not just an ordinary, nowadays so typical copy of things past. The band adds their ideas, inventiveness. They play from the heart and it's very obvious. I have to praise the sound that cuts and burns, exactly the way I like it. Of course, I must also mention the excellent cover artwork by the master Juanjo Castellano (as always). We knock on old coffins and listen to the whispers of the undead. The songs slowly get into my blood and feel like ice in my veins. I look into the darkness and turn up the volume. I walk through the streets without light, constantly looking behind me. The "Horrend" EP really feels like an old horror movie turned into a harsh reality. Broken bones, crushed skulls, hopelessness and coldness. Endless cold and darkness, that's what I hear the most from the record. I just think it needs a full-length album. As it is, it's just a taster, which I really enjoy listening to, but I'd like more! The streets are foggy and smoggy again. People are afraid to go out. Another dead body, another life ruined. The atmosphere of fear has fallen on the city like a heavy cloud. Into the silence, the first riff sounds and blows your brains out! Very good stuff! Dusty, rotting old school death metal from the old burial grounds!
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